!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
The trick is finding a pesticide that the LD50 for mosquitoes is less then humans and take an amount constantly to maintain lethal to mosquito blood levels that isn’t lethal to humans.
If you want more details I can’t help because this idea is really dumb.
What does LD50 even mean?
The value of LD50 for a substance is the dose required to kill half the members of a tested population after a specified test duration
This is, effectively, how oral flee/tick medications work in animals. It basically turns the animal's blood into a mild poison. The poison is mild enough that it doesn't affect the animal but it's enough to kill small insects like flees, ticks, or mosquitoes.
The LD50 is usually expressed as the mass of substance administered per unit mass of test subject, typically as milligrams of substance per kilogram of body mass, sometimes also stated as nanograms (suitable for botulinum), micrograms, or grams (suitable for paracetamol) per kilogram. Stating it this way allows the relative toxicity of different substances to be compared and normalizes for the variation in the size of the animals exposed (although toxicity does not always scale simply with body mass).
Dose needed to kill half the number of individuals or animals of a species that take it. So if 100 people took this substance, what would be the dose needed to kill 50 of them. Same for mosquitos.
Pretty sure I just stumbled onto the orgins story for a radioactive super villain.
"Now now, Batman, you should know that when a little pest like you dances with the Bug Zapper... He'd better be ready for a shock!"
I was thinking about the Mosquitoman but since the Swedes call Batman the Läderlappen I’d say we use the Swedish name Mygga and call him Myggaman - drawn to the burning flames of war and he just blasts high pitched sounds from every electric device all night to turn people into rage.
I do three things and mosquitos avoid me: I eat a ton of garlic, I take a ton of drugs, and I smoke a ton of weed. My blood is semisolid.
After I got long covid mosquitos stopped trying to eat me lol.
So maybe sickness helps idk.
Permethrin clothing. Works fucking amazing. I have a jumpsuit treaded with it, kills ticks, mosquitoes, black flies. Not just repel but kill on contact!
Permethrin is toxic to cats; however, it has little effect on dogs. Many cats die after being given flea treatments intended for dogs, or by contact with dogs having recently been treated with permethrin. In cats it may induce hyperexcitability, tremors, seizures, and death.
fyi
Thanks for the info. I have 3 cats and I was about to look into this.
Your link is about a medicine/spray. Where are you finding the clothing?
I've treated my hunting clothing with permethrin when we were going to an area that was known to have an extremely heavy tick population. We had a spray bottle of the stuff, and did a thick coating all over our outer gear, and then allowed it to dry. Permethrin is fairly low toxicity for humans & dogs, but absolutely killer for mosquitoes and ticks. Worked like a charm!
Army combat uniforms even come pretreated with it.
I think sugar makes you more attractive to mosquitoes. I know from first-hand experience that if you're always hung over, and you smoke cigarettes, then the city mosquitos will leave you alone. The high country mosquitos don't give a fuck though, they'll take whatever they can get. Otherwise you want 97% DEET. Don't bother with any other stuff, it doesn't work. 97% DEET! Someone's going to come along and say "nooo, skin so soft mixed with water repels mosquitoes!". They're liars. 97% DEET.
DEET works, but is also not exactly healthy and does irritate both skin and mucus membranes. Also, applying DEET over sunscreen reduces the effect of the sunscreen by about 30%. Unless you are in a tropical environment with dangers of Malaria carrying insects, (P)Icaridin is a good alternative:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25936273/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/icaridin
Purely annecdotally, picaridin has worked as well or better than DEET for me. I barely get bitten when I use it, and I usually get bitten up pretty badly when I use DEET (though less than when I don't use it)
I also find picaridin bug spray to not feel greasy and has less odor than deet, which is nice.
DEET is also fairly toxic to dogs (and cats, but I don't have one of those) and while it's not licensed for use on dogs, it doesn't appear to be toxic to them, which I appreciate as a dog owner (I'm unsure about cats, that info seemed less readily available but I also didn't put much effort into finding it)
I never had any success with it. It might work in the cities, and populated areas where the mosquitoes have other easy options, but literally the only thing that has ever worked reliably for me in the mountains is 97% DEET. Even the lesser concentration of it, I think it's 36%, didn't work. I've tried just about everything trying to get away from DEET, and none of it works reliably. If mosquitoes are bothering me in town it's usually enough to just wear one of those electric repellers that make dragonfly noises, but I only bother with that if I'm out golfing or something, and they're not particularly bad there. Wherever they're out in force, I whip out the DEET. Forewarning though, don't spray it on polyester because it can melt it, and like you said, keep it away from eyes, nose, and lips. We spray it onto our hand and then wipe it onto our face and ears.
Diet, people with diabetes are more delicious.
Ever walk into a room, get overwhelmed with the smell of garlic? And there's no garlic in the room, just people who eat garlic? It's like that but stronger because mosquitoes have a better sense of smell
Non-diet interventions
Ever walk into a room, get overwhelmed with the smell of garlic? And there’s no garlic in the room, just people who eat garlic?
I'm suddenly very self-conscious in a way I've never felt before
Keep moving. They target CO2 exhalations.
I was on keto for a while and always the main target for mosquitoes among all my friends.
DEET is the only chemical that I know-of which they HATE.
I use mosquito-netting to keep them away from me.
I don't want DEET touching me, at all, ever again.
No, I'm not a mosquito.
: p
You need to buy Sawyer picaridin lotion. It's the most effective mosquito repellent I have found. I use it in high alpine environments where you can be swarmed by literally hundreds of mosquitos.
See, if you hadn't wanted it to be safe, you could get all kinds of answers.
There really isn't anything you can get into your bloodstream that will kill the mosquitoes without causing some degree of issues for a human. The only question is how severe, and whether or not you can get it without a prescription.
Since we already have topical chemicals that keep them away relatively well, ingesting or injecting anything would be silly.
If i can’t stop them biting me, the next best thing is to stop them biting me a second time.
But you can stop (most of) them!
My strategy is to deploy their natural enemies into my house. That includes a ground level strike team of two cats that will attack and kill anything that crawls and for support from above you want to corners between walls and ceiling covered with as many spiders as possible.
I've only been bitten once this year!
if your skin isn't bothered, anything with DEET is by far the most effective
The Ologies podcast has a great episode on Mosquitos that might help. The host talks to a mosquito scientist about what works and what doesnt and why. https://www.alieward.com/ologies/culicidology
dunno if it affected it or not but i was tripping massive balls on lsd and a mosquito sucked blood from me and seemed to get distorted and not be able to fly right lmfao
When you're out, use DEET and cover yourself. Try to only apply it to your clothes. It's toxic to humans. Are you out a lot? If so, I'd be worried about ticks and toxic plants as well.
If you have control of the land around you, make sure there's no stagnant water nearby. If you want to keep a pond, manage your mosquito population using local species if possible. In some places, you can also report stagnant bodies of water.
If they're inside, check your window screens. If you can't afford that, use a mosquito net and check my first answers.
Not a doctor. Really don't do/consume anything on the basis of what you hear on Lemmy.
But maybe the bacillus thuringiensis toxin? Bacillus thuringiensis is a bacterium that produces a natural pesticide that I've heard (again, not a doctor, don't take anything I say as medical advice) doesn't affect vertibrates. But mosquitos aren't vertibrates. So, (again, not an expert and this may be bullshit) maybe that means it's safe for humans to use.
But what do I mean by "use"? I'm guessing it might (not a doctor) be safe to use on the skin (if it could be obtained in medical-grade quality -- but I'm not an expert).
But I kindof doubt (though I could be wrong) that eating bacillus thurengiensis or the actual toxin would work. The toxin is (I believe, just from reading the bacillus thuringiensis Wikipedia page) a protein, and I don't think (ɹoʇɔop ɐ ʇou ɯɐ I) consumed proteins are likely to get into the bloodstream. (And if they did, I suspect (though I am not a doctor) that would cause you some problems, or at least an immune response and some inflamation or some such.)
Before consuming Bug Powder Dust, read or watch Naked Lunch to know what you are in for
Get one of those bug lights with a sticky pad. Complete desolation of the mosquito population in my house. Then just never leave your house.
I've had good luck using permethrin as a bug repellant instead of a clothing treatment.
So one thing to prevent the first is to mask/change your odor. Booze increases bites, sitting and smelling of smoke (including things like wood camp fire smoke,) will mask you; sugary things increase. Soaps and shampoos depend on the product.
Those coils or citronella can drive them off. The noise thingies too.
Eat a lot of onion and garlic. Eat fewer fruits like bananas.
Anecdotally I have to disagree, for years I didn’t like or eat bananas, and most of my meal bases start with garlic and onion, but I’m always the first to get attacked by mosquitos.
safe for me
Well that's no fun :P
I thought it was more common, but mosquito bites do not effect me, and I only get bit very very occasionally. My kid, on the other hand, gets eaten by mosquitoes and has a very harsh reaction.
What would cause mosquitoes to naturally not want to bite me & no itching/bumps/reaction to their bites?
For the no itching/bumps part, I think the absence of an immune system reaction (or a weak one) will do that
Yeah, that tracks. 🫠
EDIT: Wait.. the itching is basically an allergic reaction to mosquito saliva. So, I'm not allergic?
IIRC the itching and inflammation is an immune response to the shit they inject you so you don't feel the bite as much while they're drinking, and huge bumps/lots of itching is an allergic reactions of sorts (which is really just the immune system going way overboard with a reaction to something that is not a threat or not a big one). So you may have no reaction to it, or a very light one
Vitamin B-12. Take 1500 mg of B-12 daily. It will mask your blood's scent, when you sweat it out. It will make you smell faintly bitter, and prevents ticks, chiggers, and mosquitoes.
Stop fighting them. Use anti histamine cream on the bitea